


Gravity

by thisprettywren



Series: Gravity Series [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-29
Updated: 2010-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisprettywren/pseuds/thisprettywren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft is a man with responsibilities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Mycroft POV.  
> Beta'd by the lovely [misanthropyray](misanthropyray.livejournal.com). Any remaining mistakes are 100% my own.

Mycroft Holmes was jealous of his brother. He admitted it to himself freely, and did so despite his knowledge that jealousy was such a _petty_ emotion, because he could afford to be petty, now and again. He was a man with _responsibilities_ and he indulged.

For one thing, Sherlock looked just like their father had at his age, shortly before he’d taken his own life, eight months before Sherlock himself was born. Sherlock didn’t know that. Wouldn’t ever, in fact. Their name hadn’t been Holmes then—changed only weeks before Sherlock’s birth, at Mummy’s insistence—and expunging the official records had been one of Mycroft’s first acts as a civil employee, fresh out of Cambridge, while Sherlock was still too young to have investigated such a possibility. Most likely hadn’t even thought of it.The change had been made in anger and Sherlock had never really understood anger. Or at least, he had never really understood anger other than his own. His own, well, Mycroft thought he might not really understand that either, not consciously. 

The resemblance was there from the beginning, pale eyes and high cheekbones, lanky limbs. It was why Mummy had allowed Sherlock so much free rein. Why, too, she hadn’t been able to approach him with affection, the longing and anger clashing on her face when she looked at him.The two were the same, really, and Mycroft tried to step in but he was a child himself, of necessity inexperienced in such matters. He could almost forgive himself the childish mistakes he’d made with Sherlock, in retrospect. Almost. And those he couldn’t forgive, he would rectify. He had the authority to do so now.

Sherlock was a bright child, almost as bright as Mycroft himself. “Bright” wasn’t the word for it, of course. Or, to be precise, “bright” was exactly the word for Sherlock and Mycroft as children, their brains sharp and quick and glinting with steel, like mercury, fluid and dangerous, but it was a word whose meaning was diluted by application to more pedestrian minds. So it was a problem of _too much_ language rather than too little, of dissemination of information beyond its appropriate boundaries. Mycroft liked to keep information within its appropriate boundaries, because it didn’t do, otherwise. Otherwise things spread and ended with children like Sherlock and himself, children for whom there were no words. And they deserved words, really. Sherlock, especially. Mycroft allowed himself a slight smile, thinking of all the words in Sherlock’s head and how many of them he’d put there himself. It was satisfying, in its way. 

Mycroft could examine his child-self dispassionately now, with the distance of time and the development of his brother as intervening factors. It didn’t do to look too closely at things without the proper _distance_ , of course, but he had the proper distance now and if he closed his eyes and allowed it he could watch his childhood like a film, could pause it at The Moment and say _ah, there, that’s when it happened_. Mycroft made Sherlock, and Sherlock made Mycroft, and if Mycroft was jealous of Sherlock it was the jealousy of a creator who was prideful in his creation. 

His creation was _marvellous_.

 

* * *

 

They had been quarrelling, as they often did; a childish argument with neither of them really at fault. But Mummy had one of her headaches and told them to go outside, so they were sitting on the lawn in the late June sun, Sherlock sullenly pulling apart blades of grass, fingers still a bit childishly soft but long even then. He was five and Mycroft was fourteen, that awkward age between childish swings of emotion and the newfound capacity to act on them. 

Sherlock looked up at him and his pale eyes caught the light _just so_ and he squinted and it was as though Mycroft was looking into his father’s face (it’s essential to be precise so Mycroft also recalls that Sherlock’s cheeks were slightly reddened from shouting, which their father’s would never have been, but no matter), and he opened his mouth and said, in the precise way he’d recently adopted in imitation of Mycroft himself, “I’m not sorry.” It was a challenge.

 _No, you’re not_ , Mycroft had thought, and he knew then that Sherlock must never be sorry. He must always stay _just this way_ , this safe, and Mummy wouldn’t have to be so angry again. “No,” he’d said, “but it’s all right, I am. I’m older, I should know better.” And Mycroft had smiled, and looked at his younger brother who had their father’s eyes, and felt a surge of childish protectiveness in his chest. Thought, _Mine._

 

* * *

 

Ah, there, that’s when it happened.

 

* * *

 

The trouble with having an older brother like Mycroft was that Mycroft was impossibly clever. “Clever” wasn’t really the word for it, no more than “bright” was, but sometimes one must sacrifice precision and make do with the limitations of language for the sake of getting on with things. Mycroft could see that he’d been trouble for Sherlock, in retrospect. Could see his own good intentions and Sherlock’s reactions, and know that both were justified in their way, but still he looked at his brother’s face and felt that surge of protectiveness— _mine—_ and could no more change his attitude than Sherlock could escape it.

Sherlock had tried, oh, he certainly had. But Mycroft was just that little bit more clever than Sherlock—more understanding of the emotional aspects of decision-making, better able to anticipate and therefore often quicker to predict Sherlock’s own actions than Sherlock himself—and he cut off such childish rebellions at the knees. Mostly through conversation with Sherlock himself, making it clear how thoroughly _unimpressed_ he was with Sherlock when he engaged in certain activities, when he allowed himself to be distracted from his studies. Sherlock was remarkably easy to mould, Mycroft found, with the threat of his disapproval in those early years. He tried to hide it, of course. Occasionally Mycroft resorted to arranging affairs without Sherlock’s knowledge, when his brother got _stubborn_ about things, but he didn’t need to know about that.

It was obvious (more obvious to Mycroft than anyone else, that didn’t even need to be said, but obvious to nearly everyone eventually) that Sherlock wasn’t precisely _normal_. That was to be expected—Mycroft wasn’t precisely normal himself, so he anticipated that his brother would be similarly disposed—but so too were the reactions of the other children, the pain he would occasionally see in Sherlock’s eyes. And it was so abundantly clear to Mycroft, home from university and confident that he would someday rule the world, that his brother was tooimportant— _bright_ and _clever,_ in the manner those words would signify if there were enough discretion in the world and language were used as sparingly as children like Sherlock deserved _—_ to be diminished by the influence of such ordinary children with their ordinary minds. 

If he was a bit too effective in this instruction—if, indeed, Sherlock now wrapped distance and arrogance around himself like armour, wielded his sense of separation as a weapon—well, perhaps Mycroft could forgive himself for that, for the intent born of affection. Sherlock’s brain was a weapon, too, like Mycroft’s own, and his role was to teach Sherlock to exercise it safely, to direct it outward, to protect himself from the impulse to let it turn and begin slicing off bits of itself until… well, until he was no longer _just this way_. Mummy still got headaches and she saw shadows behind Sherlock’s eyes, and Sherlock must never understand any of that.

 

* * *

 

It was regrettable that Mycroft missed some of the major signs, that he had miscalculated, failed to anticipate the lengths to which his brother was willing to go to establish his independence, but this was one of the mistakes he would rectify. He was out of London and wrapped up in his most recent low-level civil position (a position with _responsibilities_ , only low-level on paper, but that should be too obvious to mention), and Sherlock was attending university himself by this point. 

Their mother died; a rapid decline after a long period of infirmity, as happens. She’d been in an institution for some time, nearly a year. Neither son attended the memorial; Mycroft because he was unaware until weeks later—he was furious with the home’s administrators for not trying harder to reach him, and began establishing his network soon after that, would never again miss an event of pertinence—and Sherlock because… well. Sherlock, too, was unaware. 

When Mycroft returned to London, he attempted to contact Sherlock. Was frankly disconcerted to discover, via inquiries sent to the university administrators, that he had been “granted a term of separation from the institution” following an incident involving the police. Further attempts to gain information got him nothing, but eventually he was able to use his contacts to turn up a name: Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade.

Mycroft paid a personal visit to the DI immediately, an unmarked black car depositing him on the kerb in front of the station and then gliding quietly into the London traffic. Lestrade was at his desk, which did not afford nearly the degree of privacy which Mycroft would have liked (he would start arranging meetings on his own terms, after this). Obviously a recent promotion; Lestrade was still adjusting to his role and seemed frankly swamped with paperwork.

“He’s been consulting for us for some time,” Lestrade finally told him, once the formalities had been fulfilled. “He’s got a good eye. We weren’t quite sure what to do with him at first, but he’s managed to make himself useful.”

“Yes, I’d imagine so,” Mycroft said, keeping his face expressionless but feeling the warmth of approval spread through his chest. 

“We’d likely have hired him outright, in time,” Lestrade began, “except that he’s made that impossible.”

“Indeed,” Mycroft prompted, “and in what sense… that is, what has he done to preclude the possibility of honest employment?”

Lestrade’s face betrayed a degree of discomfort at this, but he was a man long accustomed to being the bearer of news of all sorts and wasn’t deterred. “A few weeks back, he showed up to a scene under the influence of several controlled substances. No formal charges have been filed yet, in part—“ and here Lestrade allowed himself a slight smile, “—because he was raving about a suspect who turned out, in fact, to have committed the crime in question. My boys’d missed it. I put him in a holding cell overnight and took him back to his flat the next afternoon. I’ve been checking in on him every few days.” Lestrade looked at his desk, shuffled a few papers unnecessarily. Mycroft resisted the urge to click his tongue in disapproval, settled for pursing his lips. “I’ve not actually found any narcotics on the premises and I haven’t caught him in the act of administering anything, but he hasn’t been sober when I’ve visited.” Lestrade caught Mycroft’s eye and held it. “Look, we would have… that is, he didn’t mention he had a brother.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Mycroft was noncommittal. It wasn’t really surprising, after all, but he felt a rush of frustration at his brother’s foolishness nonetheless. “Well. Thank you for your time; now that I’m aware of the situation, you may rest assured that I will be acting to rectify it as swiftly as possible. In the meantime, if I can ask your assistance with one more small matter, I would be greatly appreciative.” 

It took some convincing, but Lestrade eventually agreed to send some officers to Sherlock’s bedsit that afternoon, with instructions to bring him to their mother’s house outside London. Mycroft himself had only been there once, briefly, since her death—it was how he found out about her death, in fact—but going there seemed the thing to do.

* * *

 

“That is absolutely the last time I am getting in a bloody police car,” Sherlock muttered sullenly. The officers had just departed and Sherlock was standing at the far edge of the sitting room, shoulders hunched, hugging his coat about himself, drawn inward. He looked thin, thinner than Mycroft remembered, and pale. _But then, he’s always been pale,_ Mycroft reminded himself.

“You’ve let your hair grow out,” he said instead.

Sherlock glared. “You’ve gotten fat,” came the reply, and Mycroft skewed his head to one side. This level of hostility so early in their interaction was unusual and surely wasn’t entirely the result of Sherlock having been misled about the destination of the police car. He’d had a long ride in which to get over that, after all.

“How’s school?” he asked coolly, refusing to engage, knowing the best way to put Sherlock on the defensive. His brother didn’t answer; instead, he heaved a sigh and flopped sideways into one of the big chairs, knees hooked over the armrest and feet dangling over the side. He’d always been like that, boneless and malleable as a child, apt to remain in any position in which he found himself simply because he couldn’t see the advantage in rearranging his long limbs.

“So dramatic.” Mycroft allowed one corner of his lip to curl in an amused smirk. 

Sherlock closed his eyes, letting his head fall back in a way that Mycroft knew just _couldn’t_ be comfortable. “Yes, and subterfuge and uniformed escorts are the model of subtlety. You are, truly, a living understatement.” One hand had found its way out of his coat pocket and was worrying at a button. “You could have just called, you know. It’s you who pays the mobile bill.”

(Mycroft would think of this later, during his first interaction with John Watson, how similar the two were in their response to his manipulation, how dissimilar in their temperament. He knew this meant they were well-suited for one another; had the doctor responded differently he would have put a stop to his involvement in Sherlock’s life. Naturally.)

“Ah yes, but what state would I have found you in, had I done so?” Mycroft was rewarded with a sideways glance from Sherlock, assessing. _He’s just now realizing I know_ , he thought. _And… there it is._ Sherlock was doing his best to maintain his position, but Mycroft recognized the unmistakable signs of the onset of anxiety—or at least the Holmesian equivalent thereof—the subtle shifting and tightening at the corners of his eyes. “What you’re wondering now,” he said slowly, deliberately, keeping his voice light but pinning his brother with his gaze, “is how I found out. The university referred me to Lestrade, of course. So there was really no need to _speak_ to you, was there, Sherlock?” _There again._ Sherlock’s foot was bouncing. He stilled it, but a few seconds later it resumed its motion. _A stimulant, then. Not at all surprising, of course._ “And now you’re thinking of making some excuse to get back to your bedsit.”

“I hardly need an excuse for that,” Sherlock said evenly, and Mycroft was proud of the control in his voice, even if he could see right through it. 

“How long do you have, before you start to feel ill?” Mycroft watched Sherlock’s eyes closely, noting the blown-out pupils, trying to figure out whether he’d brought anything with him; he knew this was the question that would give it away, and he knew Sherlock knew that too.

Sherlock’s lips twisted into what was almost a smile, and he shook his head. Mycroft had long suspected his brother found being bested by him perversely comforting; here was his proof. Finally, he said, “This is rather beneath you, isn’t it?”

“Not beneath _me,_ no,” he answered, and he could feel his mouth attempting to quirk into a mirror image of his brother’s. “Answer the question.”

Sherlock just closed his eyes and took a long breath. “It helps me think,” he said, and Mycroft knew it was the closest he would come to an explanation, just as he knew it wasn’t the whole explanation, nor yet an apology; but then, he didn’t really need to hear it, not in so many words, when he knew his brother so well. _No, nothing on him, if he’s admitting this._

“It will be bad, then.” It wasn’t a question, but Mycroft tried to soften his tone.

Sherlock did smile, then, a real smile, and it caught him by surprise. “Don’t be _stupid_ , Mycroft,” he said, finally. “Although you could have told me to bring a toothbrush.”

 

* * *

 

It was all bravado, of course. They both knew it, and Mycroft absolutely _glowed_ with pride to witness his brother pulling it off, and so well. Sherlock was nothing if not a performer, and Mycroft knew the best way to assure he would accomplish something was to goad him into performing it. _Well, then, show me the version of you that “dries out”_ (he shuddered slightly at the phrase) _and can be so cavalier about it._ Mycroft didn’t know precisely what he was on (though he could guess) so he didn’t know exactly how the withdrawal would manifest itself. In any event, he was ready. Over the next few days the house was occupied not only by Sherlock and Mycroft but by a rotating cast of Mycroft’s assistants, including one government-employed physician who was under orders not to leave the premises under any circumstances.

Sherlock, for his part, didn’t move much from the room that had been his in childhood. Mycroft heard him pacing and muttering to himself at odd hours of the night and knew he spent large portions of the day either sleeping or lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling. Agitated, insomniac, listless, restless, occasionally overcome by fits of trembling, but he didn’t seem to be vomiting or otherwise in danger of physical harm, and he was fairly successful at hiding most of the effects of withdrawal from his brother. 

Occasionally a loud noise would come from the room, a crash as though something had been thrown or fallen to the floor, and there would follow a long string of barely-stifled swearing. When this happened, Mycroft either invented a pretence to enter the room himself or sent one of his assistants into the fray, knowing that this was irritability getting the best of Sherlock and, left to his own devices, he would rapidly spiral out of control. Forcing him to temper his emotions by imposing himself as witness to them would help him keep a lid on them, he was sure of it. When Mycroft entered he would find Sherlock pale and sweating, hair mussed, eyes red and sharp. Sherlock wouldn’t let him see how how torn up he was, not directly, but Mycroft could see how hard he had to work to regain his composure, and that told him all he needed to know. 

He always saw what he needed to, with Sherlock.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock had been at the house for five nights when Mycroft was called in to work. Unavoidable, really, but nonetheless regrettable; he would have preferred to stay with his brother, who was growing progressively more stir-crazy. The night before, Mycroft had found him peeling up bits of the under-flooring and burning it with a lighter he’d turned up somewhere. It would take ages to get the stench out of the upholstery. 

When he got back to the house the next night, Sherlock was gone.

Mycroft didn’t even bother inquiring as to how his brother had managed to evade the staff members tasked with keeping an eye on him. _Plenty of time for demotions later_ , he told himself, and he could see from their eyes that they knew he was furious, and for now that would have to be enough because his brother’s welfare took priority. It always did.

In the end, Sherlock was pathetically easy to find. He’d called in a favor from an acquaintance, Mycroft surmised, to get a ride back to London, and had, with a level of predictability that made Mycroft heave an internal sigh of disappointment, returned to his bedsit.

When Mycroft entered—and Sherlock hadn’t even bothered to lock the door, wasn’t even keeping up the pretence that he was trying to hide, not really, not if he was being so _obvious_ about the whole thing—he found his brother sitting on the floor leaning against his bed, wearing the same clothes in which he’d been dressed when Mycroft had last seem him several days previously, head tipped back against the quilt. He hadn’t bothered to refasten the buttons on his left cuff and his skin was waxy, his pupils dilated when he lifted his head to meet Mycroft’s gaze.

“Really, Sherlock, this juvenile—“ Mycroft began.

“You,” Sherlock broke in, speaking evenly, carefully, “are to leave this instant, you unutterably bloody _bastard._ ” He closed his eyes again, let his head fall back. Mycroft waited, knowing he wasn’t done. “How dare you.” Sherlock heaved a sigh, the pale throat almost convulsing in a sob. “She’s dead. And you didn’t—“

“Well, it hardly seemed the time to tell you, wouldn’t you agree? Not with you so… distracted.” He waved a neat hand at the sparsely-furnished bedsit. He’d been waiting for the opportune moment but should have anticipated his brother figuring it out on his own, should have had a plan. Careless. Inattentive. “Really, Sherlock, you must _think_ about these things.” 

Sherlock’s head turned and he fixed Mycroft with a glare through slitted eyelids. “You didn’t _tell_ me,” Sherlock said, at last, his voice low and broken and not really his own. “All that time in her house and I didn’t even _know_ , you let me go on and on….”

“As I say,” Mycroft heard himself replying, “you’ve been distracted. Had you been more yourself, had you been in a state to _observe,_ surely you would have realized at once.”

Sherlock’s eyes snapped open at that, his face reddening as though he’d been slapped. _That may have been a bit too far,_ Mycroft thought, and didn’t say anything else for six long minutes. He could see the movement in Sherlock’s temple as he ground his teeth, the ebbing and receding of the blood in his face as he fought back the urge to cry. _He’s grieving_ , Mycroft thought, and suddenly Sherlock’s eyes were his father’s again, past and present blurring dangerously. He could feel the the bare edges of panic beginning to surface below his rib cage. He pushed them away, smoothed himself down with the skill of long practice at such control, but couldn’t overcome the protective habits of a lifetime. He cast his mind about for something _outward_ toward which to direct Sherlock’s mind, and settled, irrevocably, on himself. Regrettable but necessary. 

“And just what,” Mycroft said, fighting to keep the hesitation out of his voice, “do you think she would think about, well, all of this? You—” Sherlock’s eyes had grown hard and he raised a hand in a warning gesture. Mycroft found with mild surprise that he had stopped speaking. The silence stretched between them.

Finally, Sherlock spoke, his voice quiet. “I won’t come back with you.” 

“No,” Mycroft answered slowly, measuring his syllables , “I don’t suppose you will.” 

“You should have told me.”

“Yes.” 

“And you didn’t.”

“No.” He would berate himself later for his own foolish actions but for now he had to clear his mind, had to _think_ , focus on damage control.

He watched his brother’s head drop forward, his energy completely spent. “You’ll go. Now.”

Mycroft watched him for a long moment, calculating. This wasn’t just Sherlock flying high on the invulnerability afforded by cocaine, this time. This was something new. It didn’t matter, he supposed. He’d miscalculated; a new set of problems to solve was the logical result. 

“I will,” he answered finally, “but, Sherlock—“

“Now. Just. Go.” It was the closest he’d heard his brother come to actually asking for something since they were both very small, and Mycroft felt something inside him shatter. 

He went.

* * *

 

After that, Mycroft stayed out of his brother’s life as much as possible. For almost five months, he didn’t check in with him at all. During that time he wrapped himself in work but found himself increasingly unmoored, uncentred, tempted to engage in minor mischief. The night the trains all found their switch rails reversed, for instance. That had been him. A distraction.

When he found himself tempted to meddle in more serious affairs, Mycroft realized he needed to keep an eye on his brother. Not for Sherlock’s sake—although there was that, too—but for his own. The truth was, he needed a _reason_ not to take advantage of the opportunity to amuse himself at the expense of the public. He had, he realized, lost that reason. He needed to find it again.

 _I’m just keeping tabs,_ he told himself. _Checking in_. And he did manage to restrict himself to that, at first; as those first five months stretched out into a year, Mycroft used his network of connections to gather information about Sherlock’s activities but never contacted him directly. There were reports of him successfully assisting on cases for the Yard. There was also a great deal of security footage of Sherlock engaging in… less palatable behaviours. Cocaine and morphine, specifically. That is, _mostly_ cocaine and morphine, in tandem or both at once, and sometimes not only those; he seemed to enjoy _experimenting_ with the chemical reactions in his body. He continued to call it _experimenting_ long past the point at which even grainy surveillance footage revealed clear evidence that it was a physical dependency. More than that, too. Mycroft tried to avoid getting too specific about this side of his brother. It took effort. ( _Gathering information or ignoring it? Both,_ he decided, and decided not to further analyze his motives in this particular area.) It hurt. For once, Mycroft found comfort in his own ignorance. He indulged himself in it for as long as he could.

Just over a year after he had last spoken to his brother, however, one of his informants notified Mycroft of a situation he couldn’t just brush aside. Sherlock had gotten himself into trouble while assisting on a case in Florida. Nothing _competent,_ of course—just a low-budget revenge kidnapping with a tacked-on ransom request—but Sherlock had already been in captivity for nearly a week before Mycroft became aware of the situation. The American police had turned the whole thing into a rather thorough cock-up that resulted in it all dragging on much longer than necessary. It was clear that he needed to step in. 

The Atlantic proved to be a minor hindrance, but no true difficulty; it was only a few days later when Mycroft found himself standing in the immediate aftermath of an American-style rescue attempt ( _a bona fide shootout_ , he thought with a mixture of fascination and disgust) just outside the door behind which his brother was being held. 

He had his assistant clear the room so he could go in and address Sherlock himself. Legwork was occasionally necessary, even for him. He refused to allow himself to be nervous.

Sherlock was watching him when the door opened, eyes dark behind sweat-dampened curls, shirtless and sitting in a chair with his hands secured behind it. His hair was long, his skin pale and bruise-stained, stretched tight. There was blood on his chest and staining the fabric of his filthy trousers. The smell of vomit hung in the air. Mycroft closed the door behind him carefully.

The two brothers stared at each other for a long time.

Finally, Sherlock spoke. “I knew it would be you,” he said, and his voice was rough but there was a hint of actual amusement underlying it. _Relief too_ , Mycroft thought, and felt it himself.

“Yes,” Mycroft said, and that small exchange was enough to mobilize him, to get him behind the chair to begin slicing at the cable ties holding his brother’s hands behind him. That part at least had been well-done; three individual ties, one around each wrist and one around the chair base, all linked and pulled tight. Impossible to slip. Not that Sherlock hadn’t tried; there were deep, corrugated furrows in his flesh and dark stains coated his hands where the blood had run and dried. Mycroft carefully didn’t touch them, carefully didn’t think about what would have been required to make them. “Quite a mess you’ve found yourself in.”

“Quite so,” Sherlock replied, slowly pulling his arms in front of him and staring at his wrists in fascination. It must have hurt, Mycroft noted, but Sherlock kept all hints of pain out of his voice. He swallowed. 

“The team outside will have water,” Mycroft said, “and a doctor, if you need….”

There were deep scores on his chest, long deliberate slices. Sherlock looked down, ruefully, then back up to meet his brother’s eyes. “Not serious. They wanted it to hurt,” he admitted, “but they didn’t know. That it helped. That it was a welcome distraction.” Mycroft felt his brow furrow slightly in confusion. Waited. Sherlock shrugged, an awkwardly stiff gesture after such a long time in restraints, and held up his damaged wrists. “I am confident,” he said, with a quirk of his mouth, “that one would have a great deal of difficulty in finding a doctor who sanctioned this particular method of…. That is, when I say sanction.” He cleared his throat. “I doubt this is  common practice in rehab clinics.”

“No,” Mycroft said, the realization he had been suppressing entering his mind belatedly. “I suppose not. But… you are.” _Clean,_ he thought, and meant: _mine._

“I am.” Sherlock smiled. An actual smile, and Mycroft thought the flutter in his chest must surely be his heart breaking, joy and pain all in one flood of relief. “Bloody unpleasant way to go about it. Efficient, though.” He wanted to grab his brother, wrap him in a hug, but they’d never done that sort of thing, not even as children. That smile, though. The humour, despite everything; the confidence. _Just this way,_ he thought, and tightened his lips to swallow his grin. 

 _Marvellous._

* * *

 

It wasn’t okay between them, not precisely. Not yet. Mycroft had reached into his pocket and sent a text without looking that summoned an assistant with a blanket, then led his brother outside to sit in the fresh evening air. (It wasn’t true that he never texted, he just never texted _Sherlock_. Mycroft let him believe it was a universal rule because it was more convenient. When it came to his brother, he needed the additional information he could glean from the voice itself. He _worried._ Would always worry.) He waved away doctors and official statement-takers with promises of _yes, yes, later, later_ , knowing full well that both he and Sherlock would be spirited back to London overnight, that it would all be hushed up, become a story that the Americans would tell each other in years to come that always began with “Hey, I wonder whatever happened to….”

Sherlock was sitting on a small concrete wall that ran along the pavement, eyes closed. He was so still that Mycroft wondered briefly if he might be asleep, until he spoke. “Mycroft. The flat. I need you to… that is, I’m not quite.” He opened his eyes. “I’m not quite through the withdrawal, but the worst is past and now I’m on this side of it, I’d like to stay here. There are some, ah, things. In the flat. They’ll make it difficult. Could you…?”

“Of course,” he answered immediately, and didn’t tell Sherlock that he’d already ordered his bedsit cleared out, in the midst of arranging the rescue mission. Everything remotely questionable had gone straight in the bin. Whatever was salvageable was currently in a few boxes and bags at the house outside London: clothes, books, the violin, and precious little else. “You’ll want a new place. In the meantime….”

“No, Mycroft,” Sherlock said, quietly. “You’re here, and that’s something. But I won’t stay at the house.”

“Mmm.” Mycroft pressed his lips together, humming his disapproval. Sherlock didn’t even bother to look at him.

Sherlock answered his unasked question. “I’ll sort it out. Find a flatmate.”

(He would find—and lose—several flatmates before his introduction to John Watson. Things never wrap up that neatly, even with Mycroft’s hand in. The others he mostly lost because they ran screaming; he almost lost John because he _wouldn’t_. Mycroft lined up the first for him. That one agreed to spy. It lasted nine days. A miscalculation.)

Mycroft looked at Sherlock and felt something akin to pity; thought about what it would mean to be him—clever and all hard-edged angles, clever enough to know none of it really mattered, too sharp, too tempted to slice off bits of himself—trying to navigate the world without a centre. His hand went to the mobile in his pocket; he considered the lines of power it represented, what he could build with it, what he could destroy. Thought what it would mean to be himself in a world without Sherlock; couldn’t imagine it. How fragile and unutterably _temporary_ his brother appeared with his dark-circled eyes and his shoulders draped in a blanket. _We created each other_ , he thought, _whatever we are,_ and had an image of two stars held in a tenuous orbit by one another’s gravity, each destined to spin out if the other were lost. He suppressed a shudder.

“I’ll be watching,” he said, in lieu of all that, and Sherlock didn’t even bother to groan.

 

* * *

 

Mycroft didn’t visit his brother in the aftermath of the incident with Jim Moriarty at the pool. He knew (through surveillance, sources, the usual methods when dealing with Sherlock—that is, everything _but_ dealing directly with Sherlock) that John had been in danger. He thought of himself and his brother, and knew what it would have done to him. What it _did_ to him. To them both. He hunted Moriarty down with a blinding single-mindedness that would have frightened him had he stepped back to observe it. He, for once, didn’t.

Mycroft was angry. It was a petty emotion, but he could afford to be petty, now and again. He was a man with responsibilities. He _indulged._

He had just taken Moriarty into custody when John Watson summoned him to 221b Baker Street, four months later. He hadn’t hurt him too badly. He’d been roughed up a bit in the capture, of course—that was satisfyingly unavoidable—but mostly just left alone in a room, secured by three cable ties (Mycroft recognized effectiveness when he saw it and wasn’t against adapting useful methodology to his own purpose, regardless of provenance). Sherlock would want to hurt him, and he wanted to leave Sherlock that opportunity. To give him the chance to avenge John and, in so doing, make his own amends.

(The kit he brought to John to help with Sherlock’s illness was part of the kit he’d assembled to deal with Moriarty. Mycroft intended him to live as long as Sherlock needed him to. If it turned out to be more useful than expected, to serve a double purpose… well. Things did that, sometimes. Men, too.)

When the phone rang Mycroft was sitting in an armchair, fingers steepled under his chin, watching the little worm attempt to sleep in his seated position, unsupported head jerking up every few minutes. Sherlock hadn’t been sleeping well, either.

The voice on the line was cracked with strain, but undeniably Sherlock’s. “Mycroft. End it.”

Mycroft took a long breath, regarding the figure before him, unsure what this meant, if something in his brother had changed. “If you’re sure. I’ve been… saving him for you.”

Sherlock hesitated only fractionally. “Just kill him. Kill him and be done with it. It isn’t worth. Well. There’s a risk, while he lives.”

 _Marvellous._

“Yes,” he answered thoughtfully, testing the feel of this subtle shift as the words slid over his tongue. “I do see. Very well, then. I’ll be sure to snap a photo for you, at the very least.”

“Careless to leave evidence, Mycroft,” his brother answered, sounding distracted, “how unlike you.” And the line went dead. 

 _Just this way._

Moriarty was stirring in his chair. Mycroft, who never did legwork, who didn’t get his hands dirty, turned his back and left the room, didn’t even know which assassin it was that finished him. It didn’t matter, because Sherlock said it didn’t matter, because Sherlock had found his centre, because Sherlock was _marvellous_.

He sent the text message himself, though. Just the important information, just what could be conveyed with text on a screen: **it’s done.**

 

* * *

 

Months later, Mycroft visits the flat in Baker Street. He has a task for Sherlock, but Sherlock is out. John makes him tea while he waits and there follows some rather inconsequential small talk in which Mycroft admits that he carries his umbrella because he simply _detests_ being rained on, and John laughs and laughs before asking Mycroft if he ever told him what Sherlock said after their first meeting.

“I don’t believe so,” Mycroft replies, eyes on the handle of his umbrella, “but I’m sure it was… amusing.”

“He said you were the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.”

 _Because if he’s not here, I end the world._ The thought comes to Mycroft suddenly, unbidden, and he isn’t sure if it’s hyperbole or metaphor or a simple statement of fact. Possibly all three. _And if you’re not here, John Watson, neither is he._

“Just so, Dr. Watson.” He smiles. “And I daresay I might say the same about you.”


End file.
